72 



answered that they were dragons themselves and were willing 

 to show him their shapes, whereupon they changed into a male 

 and a female dragon. 



§ 6. Different kinds of dragons. 



The Shuh i ki ' says: "A water snake (;^ J|^, shui yuen) after 

 five hundred years changes into a^?ao(^), a Hao after a thousand 

 years changes into a lung (f|), a lung after five hundred years 

 changes into a Uoh-lung (-^ f|, "horned dragon") and after a 

 thousand years into a ying-lung (]§^|)". 



Quite different, however, is, as we have seen above (p. 65), Liu 

 Ngan's statement in his work entitled Hwainan tsze'^, according to 

 which the "flying dragons'" are the offspring of the bird yil-kia * 

 ("the winged barbel"; this is the reason, says the commentary 

 to this passage, why these dragons have wings) ; the ying-lung are 

 the issue of a quadruped called mao-tuh * ; the kiao-lung are the issue 

 of a fish called kiai-lin '^j the sien-lung ° are the issue of a mailed beast 

 called kiai-fan''; and the ¥uh-luiig^ are produced by a sea plant 

 called hai-lu ". When the yellow dragon, horn from _:£ellow gold a 

 thousand ye ars oI3. enters" a d eep placeT^a yellow springdiiEgs 



and if from this spring somTpartie le a !° Qjioe rthesebeco me 



-a yellow cloud. In the same way blue springs and blue clouds 



originate from blue Ax^k^^¥^^^^S''frar!r=W&^=^^r-Si§h.t hundred 



, years old; red, white and black spri ngs and cl ouds from red, 



white and black dragons born -fTom--goW~^f+he-sameIISiours, a 



thousand years old. 



The Poh 2/a " ~gives~t&e following definition of the principal 



1 gjt ^ g2 , written by Jen Fang, ^^ ^ , in the sixth century A. D. (another 

 work of the same name dates from 1701), Ch. _|^ , p. 6a: -jk T^ ^ W ^ ^ 





2Ch.IV, itb^flj. 3 ^ 



Bfefe *& "jfe" 'fiV D itiiL S6 4te >OV ta idm iafi \nu 1, tu^ n... jc. 



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